Rashid Rauf's brother, Tayib Rauf, was arrested in the UK during the
"anti-terror" raids of August 9/10 and held for two weeks before being released without charges.
Their father, Abdul Rauf, was arrested (or merely detained) in Pakistan
before he too was released without being charged. Within a few days of
his release, however, a Muslim charity which he founded, and which had
allegedly been funneling money to terrorists, had its funds frozen.
Hmmm.

Serious strangeness surrounds the Rashid Rauf story in multiple layers.

For
instance, some reports indicate that he was arrested on August 9th in
Pakistan, that he sent a text message (or else phoned a friend who sent
a text message) to the alleged plotters in England, telling them to go
ahead, and that the police intercepted the message and arrested the
alleged would-be bombers.

Other reporters believe that he was
arrested three or four days (or maybe as much as a week) earlier, that
he was tortured in a Pakistani prison, that he revealed the names of
the alleged plotters to his interrogators, and that the so-called
Liquid Bombers were arrested thanks to cooperation of the Pakistani
police, who promptly shared the names with Scotland Yard.

We may never know the truth ... but I am still digging.

In
my opinion, this is not primarily about Rashid Rauf, and neither is it
primarily about the eleven Britons who are charged with "conspiracy to
murder".

It's not even about the abrupt change in the news cycle
which it caused, and which was used to maximum advantage both by the
Blair government in the UK and by the Bush government in the USA.

It
has something to do with the draconian restrictions imposed on air
travel, first at Heathrow and then all over Europe and North America,
restrictions which have just recently been relaxed and which are still
ludicrous.

But even more than that. It sideswiped the political
landscape at a time when the war criminals who prowl the Oval Office,
and the war criminals who take their orders from the aforementioned
Oval Office war criminals, badly needed a change in said political
landscape. It led to three weeks of full-bore terror-alerts, which were
followed by another round of Pin 9/11 on Osama bin Laden,
and -- as if by magic -- the war criminals (on behalf of whom both
Osama bin Laden and Rashid Rauf appear to have been working) had a plan
all ready to make sure that that exploitation of this frenzy for
political purposes was complete.

And what was in the plan? It's
easier to understand it if you can see it from a distance. And it helps
to have a good guide with you. David Wallechinsky published one
recently, at Huffington Post, and we'll share the final few paragraphs
(along with a few slightly frozen remarks from yours truly):

What
with Bush's low approval ratings, the president and his administration
could not count on Congressional Republicans to pass this Act just
because Bush asked them to. So they ratcheted up the terrorism fear
level and, six weeks before an election, forced the Republicans to rush
through the Act in order to look tough on terrorism just before
Americans went to the polls.

The timing was very kind to
the British as well, with Tony Blair teetering on and on, and his
would-be successors bringing the knives into the open for the first
time in many years.

And how did the Bush administration raise the fear level? Take a look at the Gallup Poll results relating to President Bush's handling of terrorism.
In July of this year, more Americans disapproved of his handling of
terrorism than approved. Four weeks later, there was a reversal and a
majority approved of Bush's anti-terror performance. What happened in
between?...the arrest of more than twenty suspects in a terrorist plot
in England that was aimed at destroying ten airplanes.

An alleged terrorist plot in England that was supposedly
aimed at destroying ten airplanes (although we now know that destroying
even one airplane with a so-called "liquid bomb" is quite impossible)

This
incident was a perfect launch for the Bush administration's
pre-election Be Afraid of Terrorists campaign. Even Bush's overall
approval rating went up, albeit by a modest 3%. The Bush team sure got
lucky on that one. Or was there more to it? Maybe it's just my fertile
imagination, but...

I recommend reading the article about the plot
by Don Van Natta, Elaine Sciolino and Stephen Grey that appeared in the
New York Times on August 28 and that is available online through the
TimesSelect service or on various unofficial sites.

The link above leads to a site set up expressly to mirror that NYT article.

The article makes clear that the plot was real. However, it was not imminent.

It's
hard for me to imagine in what sense the plot was "real", but in all
other respects Mr. Wallechensky's approach seems quite sound.

British
officials apologized, two weeks after the fact, for the exaggerated,
panic-inducing statements they had made at the time of the arrests.
Naturally, the dire warnings made headlines, while the retractions and
apologies went largely unnoticed.

Naturally!

The
most intriguing revelation in this article is that British officials at
Scotland Yard felt in complete control of the plotters,

Scotland Yard may have been in complete control of the alleged plotters, in more ways than one!

who
had not yet made flight reservations and two of whom had not yet even
obtained passports. The British spies wanted to continue their
surveillance of the plotters. Unfortunately, Scotland Yard was forced
to act quickly because, thousands of miles away in Pakistan, the
Pakistani government, without informing their British anti-terror
colleagues, arrested a man with dual British/Pakistani citizenship who
was, presumably, vital to the plot and whose arrest was immediately
known to the plotters.

Mr. Wallechensky here joins the
text-message school of thought, as opposed to the tortured-confession
school of thought favored by such seasoned observers as Nafeez Ahmed
and Craig Murray.

From the Times: "Several senior British
officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing
them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators here who
had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more
evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people
involved in the suspected plot." So if the hijackings were not imminent
and the British wanted to wait before making any arrests, why did the
government of Pakistan's dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, arrest
Rashid Rauf when it did? So far, there has been no official explanation.

Well, the official White House explanation for this series of events would not be difficult to predict:

"Terrah! Terrah! 9/11! Look Over There!!"

Other reports suggested that Pakistani intelligence picked up Rashid Rauf because the Americans had threatened to "render" him.

As
I said, maybe I just have too fertile of an imagination, but one thing
is certain: over a period of just seven weeks, that arrest triggered
the British arrests that set off a fear-of-terrorism panic that gave
President Bush extra ammunition to pressure Congressional Republicans,
who then rushed through passage of an anti-terrorism bill

Ahem.
A so-called anti-terrorism bill. Please. There's no evidence -- not
even a hint of a suggestion -- that any aspect of the Military
Commissions Act will deter, prevent or otherwise mitigate terrorist
attacks in the USA or indeed terrorism in the world generally. The Act
in effect codifies some of the most grievous transgressions Bush and
his junta have been claiming the right to commit -- and actually
committing! -- since September of 2001. Or, as David Wallechensky
describes it, it's the Act

that transferred new powers to
the executive branch while, at the same time, immunizing President Bush
and others from prosecution for their violations of the U.S. War Crimes
Act.

Indeed.

Some guys have all the luck.

They sure do.

I
have reported extensively on the story of Rashid Rauf and the so-called
Liquid Bombers, ten fairly long articles on the subject so far. If
you're interested in more details, more links, a full explanation of
why the alleged plan of attack would have been impossible tp implement,
and much more, this post would be a good place to start: The "Liquid Bombers" Series

...
As I recall, this scare was convenient for other reasons, including as a timely tonic for distracting and minimizing sympathy over the increasingly embarrassing US-UK backed destruction of Lebanon.

...
PS Keep up the good work, WP. Meanwhile, this dubious case is going to trial here in Oz. The bust, would you believe, was orchestrated in time to create support for pending 'Counterterror' legislation